Page 46 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
When Tom takes Elodie to bed, she sits in silence on the sofa in the lounge, feet tucked up under herself, the white envelope sitting on the coffee table in front of her. She doesn’t turn on the TV. She doesn’t read a book. She sits and waits for Tom.
“What’s up?” Tom breezes in, sinking onto the sofa next to her. He grabs the remote and flicks through a couple of channels before realizing that his wife is silent next to him. “Jess?”
She sighs through her nose, fidgeting for a moment. “Look in the envelope.”
He half frowns as he reaches forward and lifts the photos from inside. All at once his jaw slackens and his features take on a puce cast, then a blanched white, like skim milk. He rubs a hand over his face, blinking at the images, as though he can’t comprehend them. He turns to Jess, shock etched into his features. He regards her, this woman he’s known almost his entire life, and knows she’s holding a whole world inside her. One she keeps entirely separateand secret from him. “I—I don’t understand. These aren’t Elodie’s. The date on these is today.”
“They were taken today. At my ultrasound.”
“But... this is a baby. Ababy.”
“Yes, it is. Our baby.”
Tom regards her, seeing a stranger sitting beside him. A stranger with Jess’s eyes, her body, but it’s as though someone else has slipped inside her skin, or like the real Jess, the true Jess, has suddenly slipped out. Her features are pinched and, she imagines, fairly dull. “I—I don’t understand. You’re going to have to help me out here, Jess. What do you want me to say? Surely this is great news?”
“I—” she begins, but stops with a sigh. “I should have told you sooner. I went there today, and all I could think was that Carrie’s back, she’s in town, and in another life she might have been there with me.” Her throat tightens and she closes her eyes, gathering herself back together.
“Oh, Jess...” He looks back at the ultrasound photos, the bulbous head, the tiny body, shifting through the image in shades of black and white. It was different when they found out about Elodie. So different. She can still remember that swell of pride and wonder they shared, as well as the utter, utter terror at the enormity of it all. He shuffles the photos back into the envelope and places it on the coffee table. “I’m sorry. I don’t—I don’t know how to fix that. I told her she should leave, and that isn’t going to help, is it?”
“Not really,” Jess says, sniffling. “Especially because we argued. I saw her for the first time in a decade, and we argued. I—I’ve been so cross with you, so angry that you went and saw her without me—”
His face crumples. “I’m sorry if I made it worse.”
She gets up and moves to the kitchen, needing space in her mind, in her soul. She knows she’s still not being entirely honest. This isn’t the whole truth, but only a piece of it. The thing she’s not ready to say—can’t say—is that she thinks she’s the reason why Carrie left ten years ago. Why she ran out on their wedding, and why everything is so fucked up now. She wants to tell him. But she feels like she’s in too deep—a decade too deep. What if Tom would have chosen Carrie? What if she had stayed? “I’m not finding out the sex. I don’t want to know.”
“Okay. That’s absolutely fine. But you have to tell me about the next appointment; we should go together, surely—”
“We’ve just been so distant, Tom.” She pushes a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. I’m going to bed. I’ll—I’ll make sure you’re at the next appointment. Sorry.” She leaves the room, and as she trudges up the stairs she already wants to take it all back. All her sharp edges, all her gloom. All her guilt and fear and longing. Her gloom seems to be about Tom, but really, it’s not at all. She’s scared that she’ll lose him if she tells him about that night, about what Cora did. What she herselfbeggedCora to do. But she’s also scared that if she doesn’t tell him, she’ll lose too much of herself.
She doesn’t go back downstairs. She brushes her teeth, picks up her Kindle, and loses herself in a story about someone else’s life.
Chapter 37
Carrie
She snuck out under a sickle moon, her shawl wrapped around her thin shoulders, and spent a night with him talking about the stars and their stories.
—Tabitha Morgan, July 19, 1929
The sky is a wilderness, brimming with starlight. We carry a midnight picnic, taking the trail I haven’t walked along in years. It veers off in the opposite direction to Woodsmoke and Matthieu’s cabin, toward the other side of the mountain range facing the sea in the far distance. We both wear head torches and layers of coats and hats and boots. I’m bundled up so tightly that I can only shuffle along in the near-dark, following Matthieu’s back as we make our way to our picnic spot.
“All right back there?” he says over his shoulder, his voice muffled by the coat pulled up over his mouth. “In a minute, you’ll see why this is the best spot.”
I giggle and place a hand on his coat. He stops to turn round, and I catch a flash of teeth as he pulls his coat down and lowers his mouth to mine. The brush of heat as he touches my lips with his sends a jolt of starlight through me. I pull him closer, deepening the kiss, reaching up to run a hand over his jaw. He laughs, grabbing for my hand and pulling me farther up the trail. “I promise you won’t want to miss this. I promise.”
In only a few more steps we arrive. I stop in my tracks to stareat the clearing, the trees melting away, at what Matthieu has created. “When?” I breathe, letting go of his hand to walk closer. I turn in a circle, taking in what he’s done, and find him staring at me, grinning. All around us are battery-operated fairy lights on copper wire, woven in the trees. Peeping out from the boughs, the tiny glowing lights in the dark mingle with the starlight overhead. And in the middle of the clearing is a huge rug, piled up with blankets and cushions. It’s the setting for either a fairy tale or a photo shoot.
I walk over to the nearest tree and run a finger over a snow-draped limb. “You did all this. All for us. For... for me.” My chest tightens, and I smile back at him, the soft glow of the fairy lights highlighting his features. This is technically our second date. After that perfect afternoon of ice-skating, I didn’t think it could get any better. But this... I swallow.
He sets down the backpack full of picnic food and points to the sky. “Look up, Carrie.”
“Oh.” No words are adequate. The stars are piercing on a clear night when viewed from the field and from outside the cottage, but up here they’re dazzling—brimming, bowls of molten light dripping from the heavens, so bright and clear they cast an eerie silver glow over the world. And beyond them are a million starry pinpricks, the whispers of light so far away that they can only murmur their presence.
I clasp my hands together and gaze up, and as I do a shooting star flares in a white line. I gasp, laughing, and Matthieu comes to put his arms around me. He nuzzles into my neck, and I relax back into his warmth, torn between wanting to close my eyes and bask in the heat from his touch and not wanting to miss a single moment of the brilliant midnight sky. It’s all so new with him that every contact, every touch, sings electric.
“The clouds will cover it all in an hour,” he says, “so don’t take your eyes off the stars.”
I smile and pull him down onto the blankets and cushions, pressing my mouth to his before looking upward again. “Can you name any of the constellations?”
